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The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) hopes to get its online service back up and running by Wednesday. The agency closed the service on Saturday to protect itself from a cyber attack that compromised the personal information of approximately 11,200 Canadians.
Of this number, some 5,600 were registered in transactions with the CRA. The rest had files in other federal departments, including the Department of Employment.
The agency is assured that there will be no delay in payments for the Canadian emergency benefit (ECP) or other federal assistance put in place since the start of the pandemic. According to Annette Butikofer, deputy commissioner at the CRA, the verification of each file before the payment of payments will be done quickly.
Ms Butikofer also points out that companies will be able to apply for wage subsidies, as planned. This online function has been operational again since Monday morning.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have launched an investigation into the cyber attacks. It is already assumed that hackers got their hands on the passwords of their Canadian victims thanks to past personal data leaks that involved banks, among others.
CRA is mailing letters to affected people. For its part, the Ministry of Employment has instead reached its clients by email. All victims are urged to verify that their other personal online accounts – bank or social media accounts – have not also been reached by the cyber attack.
